There’s a few memories that come to my head with AoE1.
I remember it was one of the first games I ever played with somebody else. I remember the both of us stupidely stuck in the computer for hours playing this game…
The one other memory is trying to beat the Syracuse scenario… That thing broke my head in pieces it was nearly impossible not to kill Archimedes because of the extremely low HP… Damm I hated that scenario but always tried to solve it. Same with Crossing the Alps that was heavy!
I have had so many good memories that I don’t know which one talk about. I remember that the first time I played AoE was when my uncle lent his laptop to me.
Since that I got fascinated with the game and had a lot of great moments playing it. For many years has been one of my favorite games ever. Despite nowadays I have too little time to play, I occasionally draw things related to AoE.
Thanks to a friend I used to play AoE with I could even get a good job 
My favorite memory was to destruct empires with the Romans. Wololo!!!
Beggining the game with a few villagers, collecting resources and wondering that all this is real, and have a undiscovered world awaiting.
It’s been more than 15 years now, when we had LAN parties with 5 friends every weekend, AOE was our peace game, up to one hour we had no fire everyone was trying to build and make armies, when he hit the 60 minute mark, real war came. Good times.
Best RTS ever, i love when William Wallace arrive to save the day!
My favorite memory has to be the time when my grandma visited us over the summer and she gave me money to buy a video game. I was 4 or 5 years old and the Age of Kings expansion disc caught my eye. I took it home and instantly fell in love with the colourful vastness of the maps.
Four years down the line, I begged my father for AOE 3. The two DLCs hadn’t been launched yet. I have fond memories of playing as the French and also the main storyline revolving the fountain of youth, and who can forget the subtle Old Coot moment in the end huh?
Age of Empires is one of the most influential and memorable games I have ever played. I have played the franchise for as long as I can remember being alive.
My favourite memories are summer days having sleepovers with my best friend. He, my dad and I would eat hot dogs and mac & cheese and play for 11 hours a day all weekend because we love it so much.
Fast forward to today. My friend and I are both married and live in opposite ends of the city. My dad still lives in my childhood home. We still play together online as often as we can, and my wife is a new fan of the series. My friend and I just played a killer match of AOE3 tonight.
It’s things like these that last through any different stage of life that add so much quality to a life. The ability to relax with a friend over a common hobby and play a wonderfully developed strategy game together is something that doesn’t have a measurable value to me. In an age where video games come and go and the value they add to a life is so fleeting. But when a game franchise like Age of Empires comes along and clearly rises above the rest to have a 20+ year impact on a man’s life through all his formative years, teaching him historical concepts while training his strategic eye and giving him an amazing activity to enjoy with friends and family, it is truly something special.
I have to sincerely thank everyone who has ever been involved in making these games. You have no idea the impact you have had on my life.
Edit: It would literally make my life to snag one of these awesome shirts. Fingers crossed!
Age of empire 1 demo, the Hatti campaign.
My first experience on an RTS !
Playing the opening moves scenario on the age of empires demo campaign, being 6 i wondered how i was meant to build a base without a Tc or villager.
Playing AoE2 online with 64k ISDN line was very expensive. But the game was so great - money could not stop me playing online more and more. With AoE3 there were LAN-sessions all night long… remembering those nights!
Playing 4 vs 4 during night at school, reinventing and creating dedicated french “taunts” 
!
Library LAN parties. Every day after school, and you hoped that no one needed to do actual work on the computers! 
One of the earlier campaign missions that started you off with 1 Monk and you needed to covert enemy villagers and slowly build up your base and army, good times
Treb wars!
I bought this game for my son’s birthday back in 1998. He loved the game and always talked to me about his campaigns so one day while he was at school I gave it a try and immediately fell in love with it!
Now my son is an adult and has no time to play but I do and enjoy it a lot!
My first experience with Age of Empires was watching my dorm neighbor at college play it. He had a laptop (a big deal in my day, especially since I did not own a computer) and he used to play almost every day. I’d sneak in between work and classes and watch him.
A few years later, I had some friends who played AoE II. Every few weeks I would pack up my desktop computer, including my 17" CRT monitor, and tote it across town to have a LAN party and play together. We would have ethernet cables strewn all over the house, and 5 or 6 players duking it out in multiplayer.
Playing black forest map on HUGE and deforesting the entire thing with my villagers while playing cat and mouse with the AI just keeping them alive enough to keep the game going.
Playing black forest in the old MSN Gaming Zone!
I started playing Age of Empires when I was three years old. I wasn’t that good, and I was much more interested in using it to build vast cities spanning entire continents and so I played on Easiest difficulty and gave myself some Big Daddies to protect me, just in case.
That said, I eventually found out what the Scenario Editor was and how it worked, so every day when I came home from Kindergarten, I would rush off to the computer to create the best cities I could using the editor, stop for a half-hour to watch my favourite show when it came on, and then it was right back to the editor. I learned more about history through Age of Empires than I did in the history classes of my schools. I would play the scenario after it was ready, and live out the lives of my civilization as best I could. I loved attaching stories to every round I played, which led me right into creating campaigns and custom scenarios when I got older, but that’s a story for another day.